UK Officials Suggest Moving To FOSS To Cut Cost

The UK Government is facing a budget shortfall of around 155 Billion Pounds. So, UK Prime Minister, David Cameroon, had called upon the government officials to suggest measures to cut cost.

Two of the thirty one proposed ideas published by the Treasury department cost calls for moving from Microsoft products, like Windows, Office etc., to open-source ones like Linux, OpenOffice etc.

This is what a proposal says:

In terms of spending less, what about migrating the whole of government (the NHS, education etc.) from Microsoft products to Linux and open-source software like Openoffice.

There are plenty of open-source alternative to the Microsoft products. Linux distros, like Ubuntu, Mint, OpenSUSE etc. can easily replace Microsoft Windows for almost all applications. Another open-source software, OpenOffice is a very strong competitor to Microsoft Office. The best thing about all these open-source products is that almost all of them are free. So, you can save a lot of money which would have otherwise been spent on the license for the Microsoft products.

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is already in favor of switching to open-source software. Last year, in The Times Of London, he had written:

We need to follow the example of businesses all over the world and take advantage of open-source technology.

This is all good news for the open-source community but bitter news for Microsoft, for whom Windows and Office are reportedly the biggest source of income.

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Ricky Laishram

Ricky Laishram is a Linux and FOSS enthusiast. He is passionate about open source technologies and likes to keep abreast with the latest developments in KDE and Ubuntu. He also loves listening to music and is a huge Tegan snd Sara fan.
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